Nem emlékszem, az erkélyen van-e a szék, vagy a hálószobában maradt.

Emlékszik is the dictionary form, meaning he/she remembers. In the sentence, the speaker is talking about themself, so Hungarian uses the 1st person singular form emlékszem:

• emlékszik = he/she remembers
• emlékszem = I remember

The word nem simply negates the verb, so Nem emlékszem = I don’t remember.

The ending -e marks a yes/no question inside the sentence. In English, this is often expressed with whether or if.

So:

• van-e a szék az erkélyen = whether the chair is on the balcony

In this sentence, -e tells you that the speaker is unsure and is mentally choosing between alternatives.

Because -e is an enclitic in Hungarian: it gets attached to the word it belongs to, rather than standing alone.

Here it attaches to the finite verb:

• van-e = is there / is it

This is normal Hungarian spelling and grammar. You do not write it separately as van e.

They use different location endings because Hungarian thinks of these places differently.

• erkélyen uses -on/-en/-ön, which often means on a surface or open area
• hálószobában uses -ban/-ben, which means in an enclosed space

So:

• erkélyen = on the balcony
• hálószobában = in the bedroom

This is a very common pattern in Hungarian place expressions.

Hungarian word order is flexible, and it often reflects topic and emphasis more than fixed English-style structure.

In this sentence, the location az erkélyen comes first because the speaker is wondering about possible locations. That makes the place especially natural at the front.

Compare:

• Az erkélyen van a szék = The chair is on the balcony
• A szék az erkélyen van = The chair is on the balcony, with the chair more clearly as the topic

Both can be grammatical, but they do not sound exactly the same in emphasis.

Hungarian uses definite articles much like English uses the.

• a appears before consonant sounds
• az appears before vowel sounds

So:

• a szék
• a hálószobában
• az erkélyen

The choice between a and az is only about sound. They both mean the.

Because Hungarian often leaves out words that are already clear from context.

The subject a szék is stated in the first alternative, so in the second one it is understood:

• az erkélyen van-e a szék
• vagy a hálószobában maradt

The second part means:

• or [the chair] stayed/remained in the bedroom

This kind of omission is very normal in Hungarian.

Maradt is the past tense of marad, meaning remain, stay, or be left.

So a hálószobában maradt does not just mean location. It suggests that the chair stayed there or was left there instead of being moved somewhere else.

That gives a slightly different nuance from simple van.

For example:

• a hálószobában van = it is in the bedroom
• a hálószobában maradt = it remained in the bedroom / it was left in the bedroom

Because the two verbs express slightly different ideas.

• van describes a current state: where the chair is
• maradt refers to what happened earlier: whether it stayed in the bedroom instead of being moved

So the sentence is not just contrasting two locations mechanically. It contrasts two possibilities in the speaker’s memory:

• maybe it is on the balcony
• or maybe it stayed in the bedroom

Hungarian allows this kind of tense difference if that is the intended meaning.

Not necessarily. Hungarian can introduce an indirect yes/no question directly with -e, without hogy.

So this is perfectly normal:

• Nem emlékszem, az erkélyen van-e a szék...

You may also hear sentences with hogy in similar contexts, but it is not required here. Without hogy, the sentence sounds natural and straightforward.

The first comma separates the main clause from the clause that follows it:

• Nem emlékszem, ...

That is very common in Hungarian punctuation.

The second comma separates the two alternatives:

• ..., az erkélyen van-e a szék, vagy a hálószobában maradt

Since these are two clause-like alternatives joined by vagy, the comma is natural here. Hungarian often uses commas a bit more systematically than English in such structures.